This novel, translated from Japanese, follows Natsuko, a writer in Tokyo who is uncertain of the future, her freedom, and motherhood. Does the natural imperative of the female body –breasts and eggs – provide Natsuko with her freedom, or is there another type of freedom she is looking for?

Throughout the novel we see other women around Natsuko: her own mother, the embodiment of working-class womanhood, instills ideas of self-sacrifice and motherhood in Natsuko, her sister Makiko who is so disenchanted by her aging body and wants to get her breasts done, her niece Midoriko who is terrified of her developing body and therefore never speaks, her friend Rie who seems to feel imprisoned and duty bound by her family life, Rika who loves her single motherhood, and Sengawa who is devoted to her work. In particular, Yuriko and Aizawa who are born to mothers who have used sperm banks, and the ways in which these experiences have affected them. 

All of these characters and stories work to paint an intimate portrait of motherhood, birth, the female body, freedom, and the difficult choices that many women face. 

Happy Reading!

Emma

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

I have never had the pleasure of seeing the work of ceramic artist Edmund de Waal in person, but while reading his latest book ‘Letters to Camondo’, with its slow, deliberate, beautiful prose, its sensibility and sensitivity to people, places and subject matter, I couldn’t help but think that this must be the way de Waal works as he sits at his wheel, reflecting, creating.

‘Letters to Camondo’ tells the story of Count Moïse de Camondo, born in Constantinople in 1860, and moved to Paris at a young age. This is the story of a man and his vast art collection; the story of the house he built and the life he lived in fin de siecle Paris, a time of “talk and food and porcelain and politesse and civilité and everything possible.”

It is also the story of a man who loses his only son in World War I and decides to memorialize him by dedicating his home and his collection to him. Finally, and just like de Waal’s first book, ‘The Hare with Amber Eyes’, this is also the story of the treatment of the European Jews.

In gratitude to what Moïse de Camondo believes France has done for the Jewish people, he turns his home into a museum and donates it and the collection to the French state, only to see the French government repay his generosity by sending his daughter and her family to their deaths in concentration camps in 1942. 

The book is beautifully written as imaginary letters from de Waal to Camondo; letters that are based on extensive research and a wealth of information stored at and by Camondo himself. The letters are interspersed by lovely photographs of the house, the family and collection and the telling of life in the company of Proust, Manet and Renoir and deftly juxtaposed with the register-like chronicling of the events and treatment of the Jewish families in Paris from 1936 to Beatrice’s death in Auschwitz in1945 at the age of fifty. 

While the book can absolutely be read on its own, it is beneficial to have read de Waal’s wonderful first memoir ‘The Hare with Amber Eyes’ as it sets the scene and creates an extra framework for truly appreciating the book.

‘Letters to Camondo’ is a wonderful meditation on memory, beauty, collection and dispersement, subjects that de Waal often reflects upon in his pottery. Later this year, De Waal will be the first living artist to have his work displayed at the Musée Nissim de Camondo. What an experience it would be to see these works in this extraordinary building with its extraordinary history.

Happy Reading!

Isabella

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF Letter to Camondo by Edmund de Waal

Mothering Sunday, celebrated in the UK and Ireland since the 16th century, was traditionally a day when children, mainly daughters, who had gone to work as domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother and family.

Mothering Sunday is also the title of a slim gem of a novel (almost novella) by Graham Swift. It tells the story of Jane Fairchild, an orphan (with a name traditionally given to orphans) who works as a maid in the home of a couple who, just like so many friends and neighbors have lost their sons to World War I. The book centers on an illicit affair and the tragic end to one particular day, Mothering Sunday, March 30th, 1924 and layers revelations and memories over time while allowing us to carefully discover a woman who starts out as a domestic servant and goes on to become a famous author. 

Mothering Sunday is a romance, a story of class and education, and a picture of an England reeling from the Great War and a culture that is rapidly changing and disappearing.

"Once upon a time she'd arrived, the new maid, Jane Fairchild, at Beechwood just after a great gust of devastation. The family, like many others, had been whittled down, along with the household budget and the servants.”

Mothering Sunday has a magical quality; it is quiet, yet disruptive in so many ways, and the manner in which Swift reveals his characters to the reader makes them stay with you. You feel you know them, that you understand what has formed them and you long to know what happens to even the most peripheral person.

Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, Mothering Sunday is an ode to books, to words, and to finding your voice.

I read the book in a day, in the sun, feeling like someone had slowed the world down for a few hours allowing for a bit of time travel and reflection. 

Happy Reading!

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

I loved Melinda Gates’ ‘Moment of Lift’ and thus my expectations were pretty high given that this book would also touch upon the work of the Gates Foundation (and yes, the couple is getting divorced, but the foundation isn’t going anywhere:-)

So – is it full of dying polar bears and high waters across the globe? No, not at all. Nor is it a preachy book where Gates tells you to stop doing this or that, and he is smart enough to know that most people will not stop flying or eating meat. 

This is a book that accessibly lays out how farming/cows/meat are affecting the climate, and how we, i.e.  the world, need to invent technologies that can help us make these activities carbon neutral. He also makes it clear that we are headed for disaster if we don’t do anything and keep going as per usual.

Getting to zero greenhouse emissions won’t come for free, and Gates is good at looking at both the public and the private game. 

We need meetings like COP21 as they serve as a mechanism for pressing national governments to do their part, and especially invest heavily into R&D and innovation for solutions. 

The private game is what YOU (yes, you, the reader…) can do – like switching to LED lightning, insulating your windows, looking for a green pricing program whenever possible, etc. etc.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is a readable, friendly book that will help you think about the options and possibilities for changes. 

Gates also points to asking the right questions, like ‘how much power can we generate per square meter?’, and the economy playing out behind the climate disaster, so why not start talking much more about the Green Premiums that compare clean and dirty solutions. 

The book is full of hope and innovative ideas, and it’s a book that could easily be read twice a year to remind oneself of why this is so important. Gates wrote the book to spark more conversations, and hopefully he will succeed – you, me, and the rest of world, need to have more conversations about what to do.

Happy reading!

Lotte

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates